Why Next Generation Games Will Cost $70

Dan writes - "Do you remember the good old days when you got a $100 gift card for your birthday or Christmas? You went happily to the games section of your local Wal-Mart or Best Buy and picked out two games purchased them and you were on your merry way. Then the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 came out and $50 games were a thing of the past. Gone, never to be seen again (except for crappy movie tie in games). So now, you get another $100 gift card for your birthday or Christmas. You head down to your local Wal-Mart or Best Buy and you grab two games, run to the register and realize games are now $60 and you’ve got to put one back. Not only are you deprived of one game, you’ve got $40.01 left on your gift card and forced to either spend your money or just keep the useless piece of plastic."

Games have always gone up in price when consoles initially come out. I can't remember if PS3 games were 70 bucks initially but I know PS2 and some PS1 games were depending on where you shopped. Initial costs to keep a console going are extreemly high on startup due to huge manufacturing, marketing and R&D costs that can sink a company if it doesn't manage its cashflow properly, the extra money can be the difference between profit and loss for the year, and in Sony's case with its dire financial straits it can use all the cash it can get lol

I don't agree. Look at the movie industry, the costs went up but movie tickets are still the same as in the 80's and 90's. And the price of the DVD's were as high as Blu-ray are now. So there really isn't any significant increase in prices. Same goes for music industry, the albums are just as expensive as before. Heck, the music industry has even lowered in price thanks to Spotify and other digital music services.

Costs increase, but so does the number of gamers out there who buy the consoles and games. You can't expect us to pay upwards 10$ more for each generation.

I would rather next gen titles look no better than current day games (except higher res/AA) and get more content, than pay $70 per game. I already don't like paying $60 for a game that could ultimately disappoint me.

"Why Next Generation Games Will Cost $70" - As a community, gamers have become so pathetic that many of them defend getting screwed over on a constant basis. No one will put up enough of a stink when games hit $70. COD sales will probably stay the course, and other games will suffer. The industry will saturate more and get weaker as idiotic CEOs stay the course. Meanwhile, titles akin to Angry Birds and Minecraft will be booming.

When...oops...IF these foolish CEOs ever find their heads, buried miles in their butts, and reel them out, maybe they can realize that expensive engines and copying what the most successful game is doing, is not alone what makes and sells games. Or even the most important. If that day comes, perhaps the game industry can thrive even further, and pull itself away from another inevitable crash.

I don't have as much issues with $70 games, because if you can't afford them now just wait and they will drop in price. Capitalism will ensure fair market pricing on games. Just take a look at the current state, brand new games price drops within weeks now.

It is basically the one thing, publisher cannot screw me over on.

On the other hand, anti-consumer behavior such as online passes, and ugly DLC is far more damaging to me as a gamer.

As a note, I love DLC that are done well. For instance, Lair of the Shadow Broker for ME2 was an excellent and worthwhile DLC despite the slightly high cost. However, ugly DLC are the likes of weapons and characters. Which also exist in ME2 ironically...

I think publishing costs is the last thing a publishing company actually looks at when they're picking their prices... It's all price/demand curves... if there is a good demand for it, you can charge more... That's economy 101.

I highly doubt the cost of production is the reason why call of duty games are 59.99 each year. They could lower their price to 39.99 and still make billions.

There's something very important that for whatever reason, most people can't seem to realize.

Improved technology brings prices down. The reason prices went up is because there's more to production than the engine. There's the music, the motion capture, the actors, etc...

The reason games went from 50-60 is because of that very reason. Well, we already have that now. In the next generation they aren't going to need to make music more sophisticated than 7.1. it's already there. they aren't going to have to hire MORE actors than they already do. The only thing that will improve in the next generation is going to be on the graphics engine side. the physics, the look, etc...

So you aren't going to need drastically bigger teams to develop for the next generation like you did in this last leap.

If prices go up to 70, it's only because they think they can get away with it. and the only way to stop them, is by not supporting it. but we're really bad consumers, and we'll just suck it up and try to justify it because we think that the cost of development in the next generation will go up the same amount as it did in the last.

Example, 4+ Years ago to watch a film in Cinema you pay £3.50/£4.00. Now that price is £6.95. 3D is ridiculous aswell, a 3D film with glasses will cost you £9.95. Then on top of all this, the food at the cinema are ridiculously expensive and they dont allow you to bring your own food.

Back to gaming, PS2 era and before I would happily pay £40 ($60) because back then, they were complete games. Not games that were half done and then the DLC costing £10+. Now a days you pay £40 for an incomplete game.

Oh and btw, we pay £40-£45 for a new release game here in UK. That in US $ is $63-$71. So if you Americans think you have it bad there, think again; We have it ALOT worse...

"Then the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 came out and $50 games were a thing of the past."

Only on console, PC games till this day cost only 49usd at launch some even cost 39usd. Hell i personally bought BF3 at launch for only 37usd on the PC. Most games if shopped around are very cheap on PC. Its only console makers looking to rip people of be it with high game prices, charges to go online, lack of BC, HD remakes, over priced accessories.

Now regarding cost of development, its only way to prepare console gamers to get milked even more than they already are. A game like Crysis 1 on PC is still a gen ahead of whatever there is on Console. Yet Crysis only cost 20million usd to develop. It was even very profitable selling on PC. So why are console developers and makers crying about game dev cost going high. Reason is simple they want to create an environment where they can milk the people.

What is making console gaming expensive is royalties MS and Sony want, Massive advertisement costs (sometimes even more than the cost to develop the game), its all what console gamers must indirectly bare. They are fooled into buying hardware that looks cheap as an initial investment however later on its plainly ripping people off.

Devs are not to blame for rising costs publishers are. Devs get about $20 for the game at most which means they cant really say its anything to do with development costs. I honestly think though to cut costs devs should start doing Digital right. Why is it on my UK PSN new games are £49.99 yet in stores they are £39.99 for the physical copy? The digital copys sells and the dev gets 90% of the fee but the physical copy? 30-40%. Devs shouldn't punish digital buyers and instead embrace them. Release digital copys for £29.99. They still get more money, you cannot trade a digital copy nor sell it and the devs get more than you buying it at £39.99 from a store.

$70!?!?!? DAMN!! thats too much to pay with tax were I live new games come to a total of $75 any more then what were already paying is to much. I wonder if we will start to see a decline in games sales because of that, and if you think piracy is bad now just wait until then. I think the average price should be $45-$55 to me that is acceptable to me.

Publishers have been doing a lot of penny pinching lately and I think it's geting out of control, take a look on PSN and XBL and look at some of this DLC most of it is over priced and 90% of it all are costume packs.The gaming idustry seems to becoming one were the "customer is always wrong" imo maybe im wrong idk not really saying I am but damn...all I can say is my PC and steam will keep me going if this happens next gen -small rant

hay guys theres this thing called inflation. 70 2012 dollars is equivalent to 60.83 2006 dollars is equivalent to 50.76 1999 dollars. the price of games around a console launch has really always been the same for over a decade. the price of games gradually decreases through the console generation, then hikes up about 10 at the start of a new. i'm not saying inflation is okay, (damn you federal reserve) but it is what it is. now i do think that dlc is getting out of hand though.

If games go up to $70 then I'm done with buying games new. It was a nice hobby, but it's becoming to expensive.

I will see terrible things with Activision if games go to $70.

Anyway there is a flaw with the first paragraph. PS1 games, NES games, have seen prices around $50-$60 bucks

Also adjust for inflation and see how much those games would cost today. So technically games are cheaper now considering inflation. I think

Use this: http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin... game for $80 1991 = $133 for today I remember buying a few games $50 Plus back in the days. I take it this Author didn't buy his games when he was little. EDITED:

And as I've said, this whole production thing just seems like utter BS to me. I know cost are rising, but our wallets have always been raped by publishers. Inflation or not, $80 earned back then is still $80 today, even if the purchasing power may be different.

Damn dude. You must not remember those Genesis and Snes cartridges that were around $70+, back in the early 90's!! I remember going with my buddy to go get Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask, and that bad boy was 89 bucks!! And that was I think 2000 or 2001.

you cant compair expensive cartidge production to a disk based format there is a massive difference in production costs dont forget in the same era you still had games on floppy disk which were much cheeper and games on tape if you go back even earlier that i used to buy for £1.99.

@ $70 I'll not stop buying games new, I'll just wait a month for the typical price-cut or 3 months, so I can pick a game from the bargain-bin lol game-industry, you have it all backwards if you think that higher prices will make you some good

This is an archaic pricing system and is flawed to the point that if it keeps going this way, we might see the day where we only have a handful of devs.

60 bucks is ridiculously mad. And I call bullshit on the higher cost of production. Maybe at the start of a console cycle, hut at the middle end with one game under you belt, you should have optimize your code to fly through.

It's all crap ten bucks every cycle. Whatever. There's a reason this gen has lasted longer than usual. It's because the publishers are scared to raise it again, as had as they want to.

gaming is an expensive hobby. if you cant keep up with it then change it or better of stick to the iOS since games there ar cheap. Games now are capable of a lot more so its evident that the price should go up. You want better graphics, deep online etc. Then you better assume that theyre going to cost more. You get for what you pay for.

As much as I hate iOS, this statement is right on. Gaming is an expensive hobby - do you have the right to be upset because its expensive? Absolutely - but that's the way the industry is.

Remember that it's not just the production costs that go up, it's the cost of living all together. It's why bread used to cost 25c and now costs over a buck per loaf. It's why minimum wage goes up. These are universal market trends, not just something from one industry.

thats too much. £40 is just about right, if we allow them to go higher there no telling what the prices are going to be. it not like were getting paid more at our jobs yet the prices of most things are going up.

Mika i agree with what you are saying but if game prices carry on going up we will see alot more developers go bust just like this gen as people will start to only buy 2 maybe 3 games a year and we will start to see the cod effect again. If i look at what people who are not core gamers buy on my live friends list i will see cod fifa and gta as the main 3 games for none exclusives.

What i think developers should do next gen if games will cost so much is bring the game out for £50 to £55 and then instead of release a w full retail game the next year make it a dlc. For around £20 to £30 where you get a new sp and mp added onto the 1st game. I think this would help sales of alot of games go up.

I am one of the lucky people who buy lots of games from my self but i know people who cant afford to do that so they have to pick something they will play for 12 months or so.

This is a copy and paste of a post i made regarding on Jaffe saying that he doesn't care much about next gen consoles, as it would mean more budget etc.

Jaffe pretty much said what Ive been saying all along, consoles are advancing far too quick, to develop games it costs alot more compared to how much they cost to develop last gen its only hurting devs, games also take more time to develop and people wonder why a lot of games today are barebones compared to last gen, I think this is the main factor that the number of quality games in Japan is a lot less as the Japanese developers are smaller whereas in the west most devs are backed by big publishers such as EA, Activision etc, thats why most Japanese devs have moved onto handheld notice how there are a lot more quality games from Japanese are now on handhelds.

If we keep carrying on this rate next gen games will probably cost more and see a lot more dlc so that devs can cover costs as much as i want to see much more powerful consoles i think it will just hurt the industry and the devs, i think Nintendo were on the right track this gen in that they slowed down the console cycle with the wii by not creating much powerful thus allowing the same quality as games as last gen although this didn't work out since there was bigger audience on the HD systems.

I know what im going to say isn't going to be popular if Sony and Microsoft followed suit with nintendo and had consoles slightly more powerful than last gen the game industry would be in a better position and we would see more quality games even though they might not have amazing graphics, we're in the finals stages of the current gen and now games on current systems costs nearly the equal amount as last gen and by the time we get to the next gen consoles who knows how much more budget is needed to develop games, this could mean alot more dlc, prices of games increase, publishers will want to take less risks with new IPs which is bad for the industry.

There's a huge misconception that video games today are overpriced. The truth is that current video game cost at $60 is actually a discount compared to the past. The reason why is because the cost of video games have not factored in inflation.

Back in the NES days games cost as much as $50, that's equivalent to paying $80-$85 today. If video games kept up with inflation, we would be expecting to pay $90 per game today.

The fact is that in the past, development cost was low, yet the price per game was high. Where as today, development cost is high, but the cost of games are actually very low due to the lack of inflation being tacked on to the cost.

Even if the cost of video games goes up to $70, we are still paying a lower cost compared to the past.

They -shouldn't- be... The only reason games are 60 dollars today is because of the blu-ray discs that cost more to use. (With Microsoft who knows... They have no excuse for charging an extra ten dollars for games) Why do you think (most) PC games are still 50?

Still, that would suck to see rising prices for no known reason whatsoever. :\

Actually, they weren't. MS-published 360 games like Kameo and Perfect Dark retailed for $49.99. Third party publishers charged $59.99 and then a year or so later MS used the "rising development costs" excuse to jack up first party games to $59.99.

But anyway, I agree with those who say that the only people complaining about high game prices didn't pay $80 for a Street Fighter II cartridge back in the day.

According to Square Enix chief technical officer Yoshihisa Hashimoto, Luminous Studio will reduce the cost of creating a game by "up to 30 percent" and should make the dev cycle faster. The publisher says Luminous was created to be used for any type of game from a casual title to a full-blown next-gen experience.

Software development tools are dropping drastically. There's even some new lip-sync facial tech that scales in cost per project and can offer up the same fidelity as L.A. Noire (goodbye ridiculous costs for MotionScan).

People believing that game production costs will rise are vastly misinformed about the way game design works.

Yeah this article is complete bs, this guy doesnt even give a good reason, and higher production cost is not a good reason, Rockstar games spend around 100 mil on gta 4, red dead redemtion and now max payne, all in stores new for 60 bucks

Another point i have is that here in europe games have always costed around €55.- The only price increase i saw in years was for ps3 because they use bluray

It is a problem due to the fact that by the content level from that Gen is not even half as much. When you are paying 30-40$ more and only getting a quarter as much content is where the trouble starts.